


everything precious is vulnerable.

by alekszova



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24452884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: In an alternate future, a company uses DNA to match people up with their soulmates. Eddie has gone ten years without getting matched with anybody until now, when Buck finally gives in and sends his DNA. The problem, though, is neither of them know if their connection is romantic, and they’re eight hundred miles apart from each other.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 67





	1. Chapter 1

> _Match Your DNA_
> 
> _Find the love of your life today!_

Everyone makes it sound so easy. Everyone says that it's a blessing. Knowing who they're meant to be with, who could make them the happiest person in the world. The discovery of the soulmate gene rocked the world but Buck wasn't alive before it happened. He has only known this world. Listened to the stories of people who sent in their DNA when they turned eighteen and the law allowed it. Parents divorcing, petitions to exhume the bodies of loved ones to confirm or deny whether or not their great grandparents were truly meant to be together and give peace to those still alive, waiting for confirmation of whether or not their soulmate is one of the many dead that never got the chance to meet them.

Buck doesn't want that. His parents tried to be in love. He watched them fall apart further and further when their test results came back on their 25th anniversary. He watched them try and pretend that being told they weren't meant for each other didn't matter, that they could still be happy.

And what a lie that was.

And what a horrible childhood it was to live through. Watching people tear each other apart and disappear further and further from everything and anything.

It isn't that Buck isn't happy for the people who find their Match. It's just that it doesn't mean anything. Not always. The system is flawed. People get stuck with someone that isn't right or good and then think that it's their only choice. He watched Athena and Michael struggle with each other for years before they divorced and accepted that a soulmate Match didn't mean a romantic one, and that’s not counting the decade they spent before Buck ever met either of them.

And that kind of pain--

The kind of pain his friends have gone through, the pain his parents went through, the way it affected their children and destroyed everything.

The Match system doesn’t mean anything. It never means anything. People put too much stock into it. Buck tells himself this when he decides to never take the test. That taking it wouldn’t mean he’d be happy. It wouldn’t make him less alone. It would still hurt. He would still hurt. Love doesn’t fix anything and love doesn’t solve anything and love--

Love--

_Love…_

It makes him feel so hopeless sometimes, when it should fill him with joy.

And that’s why he hates the test. The system. The people who discovered it, the people who contribute to it, the people who make businesses based around it. He hates it. Because it’s horrible.

But--

Buck also watched Maddie meet Chimney and fall in love. He sat beside Maddie when the email pinged in and he clicked to Chimney’s profile and the two of them searched through his Facebook page, consuming every bit of information he put online to decide whether or not Maddie could trust him. He was there when they first met. He was there when Maddie left on her first date and he was there when she came home on her twentieth. He was there for it all. Watching them fall in love. Being so happy. Being so incredibly happy.

And that's why he's making the mistake he is right now, dragging the cotton swab along his cheek and tucking it back inside the plastic container. The love they have is something he craves with such a fierceness that he has almost gone through with this process ten times now, every time dropping the fifty dollar DNA kit in the trash instead of the mail.

No matter what, this is always terrifying. Loving someone, being loved, having the intimacy beyond sex. He hasn't tried for any of it in three years. But sometimes his jealousy gets the best of him and it feels like he's failing. He already thinks he's failed at everything else.

Buck holds the tube in his hand, looking down at all the pamphlets and papers littering the table. Disclaimers and receipts. Things he doesn't read that he probably should. 

_Do it. Go for it. Send it in._

_What could it hurt, Buck?_

_What could it possibly hurt?_

Everything.

If Buck's soul mate turned him down, what would he have left? The person that's genetically made for him wouldn't even want him and the loneliness he feels would be cemented into place for forever. Logically, he knows that romance isn't everything. Logically, Buck is aware that someone loving him doesn't have to be his other half to be valid. The love would still be real. It'd still be there. But it doesn't matter. It's not what he wants. He wants the earth shattering love that tests the boundaries of life and fate. He wants to matter to someone that much.

And if not--

It just hurts. It's just an ache that will never go away. No matter what.

  
  


Buck drops the package in the mail on his way to work the next morning, letting the sleep deprivation and weariness of a job needing to be done outweigh his desire to take the box and throw it in the street with half a dozen others.

_Come on, Buck._

_You could find The One._

And if he doesn't--

Maybe that will allow him to move on. Maybe he will break first, but he'll still be able to move on.

Your Match has been found!

FROM: Match Your DNA • noreply@matchyourdna.com

TO: eddiediaz118@zmail.com

> Congratulations! We have found your Match. To get the details and personal information on your Match, log into your account on matchyourdna.com and follow the steps in the CONTACT MATCH tab, or click the link below. A fee of 25 USD is required to access contact information. 

  
  


_Oh._

The email comes as a bit of a surprise to him. Eddie sent in his DNA to the website over ten years ago, in the days before he and his friends split off to college. It was the last thing they did together, all in a group. Swabbing the insides of their cheeks and sending them all in together. A stack of five packets sliding into the mailbox as they made their decision to do this together, the moment they legally could. Eddie didn't really care. He had more important things going on, but he wasn't going to be the only one that didn't participate and he wasn’t going to make his friends feel poorly about wanting to believe in something like soulmates or love at first sight.

But it was _ten years ago._

He hadn't forgotten that he sent his DNA in--though whenever he met up with his friends and they asked about it, he pretended that he had forgotten, solely to cover up his many worries--but he had started to get to the point where he stopped believing it would happen.

There were a number of reasons in his head. That his Match wasn't eighteen yet, which was more and more horrifying the older he got, and they simply couldn't send the DNA in. He also considered maybe they were cynical, refusing to believe in the process and would never participate. Or married, happily, and didn't want to risk anything else.

It wasn't all like that, though. Eddie had worse ideas. Them being dead was at the top of his list. Or maybe in a coma.

He saw a news article about a woman arrested for sending in her brain dead son's DNA to find his Match and meeting his soulmate and worried that would happen to him. To be used like that. To have hope only for it to end up with him dead. He feared that someone would take a relatives DNA against their wishes and he'd struggle to explain that despite the shitty actions of their invasion of privacy, they were still Matched.

It wasn't even the worst explanation he had--people were horrible creatures and Eddie feared that his Match might be a missing person kidnapped and held captive. Not in how their trauma would affect them, but that something so horrible would’ve happened to them in the first place, and he couldn’t do anything to help or stop it. Just sitting at home. Waiting for an email.

It didn't matter. Not really. All those worries and fears washed away when he got the email and new ones rushed in. What was their name? Job? Life? Gender? If they weren't a woman, what did that make Eddie now? He never thought of men that way before, but it wasn't like he didn't look at them in bars and think they were cute enough he wouldn't mind having a drink bought for him or asked to the dance floor.

Eddie clicks the link in the email, quickly typing in his card information. Another twenty-five dollars to that site and another five minutes before a follow-up email pinged on his phone.

  
  


Buck gets the email two weeks after he sends his DNA in, but he doesn't look at it until three minutes after he gets the notification, when he finishes pulling the corner of the sheet down on the last side of the bed. He fetches the phone, leaning back against the mattress as he reads through it. Just a confirmation that his kit was received and processed. If he has a Match already in their system, it'll be sent to him within twenty-four hours.

So he waits, pretending to busy himself with his work, flopping down on the half-made bed to refresh his email over and over again.

_Nothing, nothing, nothing._

"Buck?"

He looks up at Maddie in the doorway, “Yeah?”

“Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

“Liar,” she says, stepping inside the room. “What’s wrong? You’ve been acting weird for weeks. And you’re slacking off.”

“I’m always slacking off,” he replies. “Nothing new.”

“But this time you’re being mopey while you do it. Come on, talk to me before I have to tell Hen that you need to be replaced.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says, eyeing her, but he sits up anyway, setting his phone aside like it contains something much more explicit than an empty inbox. “Nothings wrong. I’ve just been thinking.”

“About?”

He shrugs again, because it sounds so stupid to say the word _love_ and just that. _Love._ Love is all he thinks about when he doesn’t have something to occupy his mind. He’s listened to a hundred audiobooks in his time working here. Everything ranging from middle grade fantasy stories to nonfiction about space and black holes. Anything he can get his hands onto that helps keep him from thinking about how the people around him are so in love and so happily in love and he--

He’s just Buck.

Just stupid immature, childish Buck.

But he can’t say that to Maddie, because if he tries, he’ll end up telling her how pointless and worthless everything he does is. He’ll accidentally let it slip that he doesn’t feel like he matters in the world, that he doesn’t make a difference, and he doesn’t want to hear her say that he’s wrong, mostly because he knows how much those words would hurt her. Like she doesn’t matter. But she does. That’s the problem. Buck knows how much she matters and how replaceable he is, but she won’t understand that.

It’s happened before. It’ll end up happening again.

“Buck?”

He shakes his head, standing up, “I have to finish this, Maddie. There’s a reservation for this room and it needs to be ready by check-in time.”

“Okay,” she says, but she looks hurt, almost. In the way that she has a thousand times before when he’s refused to say anything about his feelings.

But that’s just how it is, isn’t it?

Being raised to keep everything quiet and closed off, he was never taught how to speak about his problems. And when he has, people have always looked at him like he has no reason to feel the way he does. So why bother? Why bother with any of it?

Buck lays the comforter over the mattress, tucking it into place when his phone pings again. A quiet little raindrop sound that he leaps to, scrolling open his email.

_Your Match has been found!_

  
  
  


Evan Buckley lives in California.

Eight-hundred miles away.

Eight-hundred long, long miles away.

Eddie has spent his night sifting through his Match’s instagram page, scrolling through picture after picture of blue water and green trees and a smiling face looking back at him. There are some edgier photos. Black and white ones with thick cable-knit sweaters and moody expressions. Filters that either do it’s best to make the birthmark on his forehead look nonexistent and blending with the shadows or do the opposite, contrasting it to the point where it’s the focus.

He’s thought about sending him a message a hundred times now, but he doesn’t know where to start. What to say. What does someone say to their soulmate? How does he introduce himself?

_Hi. We’ve been Matched. My name is Eddie._

_Also, are you gay? Or bi? I don’t know the protocol here. I don’t know if we are meant to be friends or lovers or both._

He sounds stupid. He keeps erasing the message, over and over again, retyping it in the same way but somehow phrased even worse. How would this Evan Buckley even believe that it was him? Eddie sees the pictures he posts. Traveling all over the world, on beaches with beautiful girls. He has a million followers. People must be lying to get into his pants all the time. Eddie would be tempted.

If he liked guys.

If he was sure that he liked guys.

It’s all so very foggy, still.

Eddie closes the app on his phone, only to reopen it again, his head hurting like someone has hit him with a baseball bat. This time, he doesn’t go to _e_buckz,_ but instead heads to his own instagram page. Mostly empty. Devoid of pictures besides a few scenery shots when the sky or the place was so breathtakingly beautiful he made an effort to save the moment the only way he really knew how. He only started posting the photos to save on memory space on his phone, but even then, his page is so barren that he must seem like a fake page, especially in comparison to Evan.

_Traveller. Wanderluster. Going anywhere and everywhere I can_ ❤️

Under any other circumstances, Eddie might’ve laughed at the bio, and while he doesn’t find it endearing, he _does_ find it intimidating. Eddie hasn’t left Texas since he was small and they saved up their money for one vacation out to Florida to go to Sea World before any of the family really knew how bad Sea World was. And even then, it rained so much they only spent an hour racing from shelter to shelter, which ended up just being stores where they were left buying expensive souvenirs. Eddie still has the plush Killer Whale, so giant that it takes up an entire tote in the attic by itself, but one of those things he couldn’t get himself to get rid of. And Christopher has taken over the whale shaped bottle that cost far too much.

When Eddie compares these childhood things to Evan’s profile, it seems impossible to message him at all. His pictures are poorly edited, by which he means ‘not edited at all’. Most of his pictures consist of hiking trails and park foliage and the singular time it snowed and stuck to the ground for longer than an hour.

But regardless, Eddie has to say something. Evan doesn’t strike him as the type of person to waste his time reaching out to someone like Eddie. But does he wait? Does he let Evan spend that twenty-five dollars and message him first? Does he wait a week and if nothing happens, make the first move?

Eventually, they have to, don’t they? They can’t exactly go their entire lives without saying a word to each other.

  
  


Match Your DNA connects with at least ten different social media platforms. It was one of their selling points. Send in every bit of information, get a Match, easily be able to find them and locate as much information as someone could. Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Youtube, even, which most people don’t include, but Buck had, solely because he used to use it. Awkward comedy videos from his teenage years, boring study videos in his time at college, and most recently aesthetic vlogs, though Buck hasn’t posted one of those in three years. He still gets comments asking him why he stopped, when his videos usually got a decent amount of views.

When Buck created his account on MYDNA five years ago, he was still actively using each and every one of those accounts. It made sense to include them. He just forgot to disconnect them when he stopped. He should’ve. It would’ve saved him a lot of trouble of having someone stumble across old tweets and posts that he doesn’t stand by anymore.

Right now, he sits on his bed, scrolling through his abandoned accounts, trying to find anything that on the surface might make someone decide not to contact him. After he got the email that his Match was found, he got an email saying that they purchased his contact information. And now what is Buck to do, twelve hours later, without a single message waiting for him? Does he buy his contact’s information? Message them?

Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they’re waiting for him to make the first move. Isn’t that what people do? Always want the guy to make the first move? Maybe he’s making an assumption here, with it being a girl on the other side, waiting on him. Maybe he should be considering what it would be like if it was a boy or someone that didn’t identify as either, or both. And what would he do then?

He’s open-minded. He’d get to know anyone, and he has always had these fuzzy thoughts in his chest towards anyone and everyone. There is no strict code for who he finds attractive. But it’s different in theory than in execution. He’s only been with girls.

He feels his face go hot with a little bit of shame. He’s messing this up here. With himself, he’s messing it up. He’s panicking for no reason about unknown territory. Of who he is, of what he is, of whether or not he’s even a good person or as open-minded as he keeps telling himself he is.

_Shit._

He clicks through the email, overwhelmed with emotions detached from this, utilizing it in the only way he can. Focus on something else while he pays the twenty-five dollars and is rewarded with a profile two minutes later.

Edmundo Diaz.

Texas.

_Cute._

> e_buckz: hi.
> 
> e_buckz: i don’t know how to really start this conversation. was that a bad starter?
> 
> eddiediaz: ‘hi’? no. i think it’s a perfectly fine starter.
> 
> eddiediaz: hi, btw
> 
> eddiediaz: i’m eddie
> 
> e_buckz: hi
> 
> e_buckz: buck.
> 
> eddiediaz: hi buck
> 
> e_buckz: hi
> 
> e_buckz: we could do this forever, couldn’t we?
> 
> eddiediaz: probably. do you want to?
> 
> e_buckz: well. i wouldn’t mind. i don’t really know how to talk right now
> 
> eddiediaz: we could always talk later.
> 
> e_buckz: yeah. i guess.
> 
> e_buckz: i kind of want to talk now though? if you have time?
> 
> eddiediaz: i have time.
> 
> e_buckz: how much time?
> 
> eddiediaz: i guess for you all the time in the world
> 
> e_buckz: oh .
> 
> e_buckz: is that something we should talk about?
> 
> eddiediaz: what?
> 
> e_buckz: flirting
> 
> eddiediaz: was i flirting?
> 
> e_buckz: sorry. maybe i misread the situation
> 
> e_buckz: um. actually i have to go. sorry. bye
> 
> eddiediaz: oh. okay. talk to you soon?

  
  


Buck doesn’t reply to the last message, just sets the phone aside and curls against the pillows, burying his face against the fabric of it as though it will do anything to hide the humiliation. Usually, he’s good at recognizing when people are flirting with him. Half the people in his comments are saying something about his face or his body. He just--

He just assumed.

Because Eddie is his soulmate.

Because he wants to believe that the soulmate he gets is the romantic kind that he can fully, properly trust with all the gross parts of his life and the intimacy inside of him, hidden so deep he is afraid of ever actually allowing it to happen.

_Was I flirting?_

**Idiot.**

Now how is he ever supposed to message him back?


	2. Chapter 2

It's been a while since he’s had the nightmare. There was a time when Buck was used to them. When he started having them so frequently that he could, through his panic and anxiety, focus on breathing, on repeating that he is no longer there, in that situation, fighting for survival. There was a time when he was able to convince himself that it was over.

But it’s been months since his last nightmare. So long that he can’t recall when it last happened. Buck doesn’t keep track of them. He never has. He has been able to keep his mind off the topic of them at all, too scared that if focuses on it that it’ll infect his dreams. His dreams, which are and always have been, the most dangerous place for these thoughts to crop up in. He can’t escape them like he can in real life. There’s no distractions in a dream. There is just the moment.

The moment of a hand slipping off a ledge. The moment of laying the brush. Rocks underneath his feet, dirt in his eyes, blood in his mouth.

The moment on repeat. Over and over.

It’s been so long since Buck’s had one of these nightmares, he doesn’t remember how to deal with it anymore when he wakes. His heart is beating fast and his hand comes to his chest, pressing flat against it as thought it will soothe the pain away when all it does is reiterate to him how hard his lungs are working to get oxygen into his body at an unreasonably fast pace.

_ Slow down, _ the logical part tells him.  _ Slow down. Everything will be okay. Just breathe. In. Out. _

But he can’t. He can’t see. The dark room around him is a blur of nothingness. The only lights he sees the soft green glow from the air conditioner in his window, the red light of the power strip, the blue glow of the alarm clock.

_ See? This is your place. You’re alive. _

_ Just breathe. _

He chokes out a breath, his hand on his chest pressing deep into his skin, fingernails dragging across his skin until the pain of it is more distinguishable and tangible than the panic in his head.

_ Alive. _

He is alive.

  
  


> eddiediaz: hey. It’s been awhile. 
> 
> eddiediaz: look i don’t know if i said something to upset you, but i think we should talk?
> 
> eddiediaz: you’re my soulmate so i just mean… bad idea to just write each other off, right?
> 
> eddiediaz: not that you owe me anything just… i wanted to talk. that’s all
> 
> ebuckz: sorry. busy.
> 
> eddiediaz: i can see that
> 
> ebuckz: ?
> 
> eddiediaz: you post every day. where are you now? not in california, i assume?
> 
> ebuckz: oh.
> 
> ebuckz: look i can’t talk right now. i have to go.

  
  


_ Of course. _

Of course after years and years of waiting for somebody to come and be half of his being, they’re some Instagram douche more concerned with which filter to slap on a selfie than talking to him. Maybe it isn’t fair. What does he know about being on Instagram other than a select few pictures he posted just because he was too afraid of losing his phone, of his house burning down, of losing it all forever?

But isn’t that the difference?

The last three pictures Evan Buckley has posted on his account has been of him at the beach doing nothing but relaxing. He doesn’t work for anything. He gets by on his looks and thinks that means he doesn’t have to have a real personality, or worse, he can just ignore people for no reason.

_ That’s not true.  _ Something hits him in the back of his mind of how unfair he’s being. He doesn’t know Evan— _ Buck,  _ he reminds himself. He doesn’t know Buck. So he watched a few videos on YouTube, that makes it so he knows his life? And even if he did, even if Buck was an asshole that got money from shady sponsorships and sketchy companies, who is Eddie to him but a stranger?

Just because something in their DNA says they need to be with each other in some way, doesn’t mean they are obligated to a friendship.

Not that Eddie knows anything about friendships. He has vague conversation with a few people at work and spends the rest of his time taking care of Christopher. He’d be fine with that if he wasn’t so aware of the hole inside of him every time he went to sleep at night. How obvious the missing piece is. It doesn’t mean that Buck is going to be that missing piece. He doubts Buck could. But Eddie is still desperate to find a person that wants to fill it.

  
  


He swipes through the premade filters on his phone, clicking between his favorite three before settling on another black and white one. It looks better than the other two. The orange of his shirt is just a few shades off from the plastic rim of the sunglasses he’s wearing in the photo, and both filters exaggerate the difference to the point where it becomes strange to look at.

Whatever people say about him, at least he has an eye for color. Though, if he really cared, he probably would’ve photo-shopped it to be the same. Or he should’ve worn the green glasses like he was going to. Bring out the green in the logo on his shirt instead. But he didn’t realize how much the phone would pick up the small differences.

_ God.  _ It’s all so stupid.

He sets his phone down as Hen comes into the room, grateful for something to distract him from the monotony of pointless color theory.

“Slacking again?” she asks.

“I’m on my break.”

“In the laundry room?”

He looks towards the machines, spinning around with their sheets and cheap detergent. Not that he blames Hen for buying the cheap stuff, just that he’s never had to worry about measuring out powder detergent until he got here. He’d taken his break here to be alone, and he hadn’t even used it as a real break. He’d changed out the machines and hopped up onto the dryers hoping that he could pass the time without having to talk to anyone.

“If I go to the break room, either Bobby or Athena will be there planning out their wedding, and I’m kind of sick of hearing about it,” he says. “But I’m happy for them. I’m absolutely happy for them. After everything? It’s incredible that people are still trying to date and find love normally than with the stupid test.”

“Right,” Hen says, staring at him. “And you would never take the stupid test.”

He clenches his jaw, looking up at her. Plenty of people were hurt by the test and the results it spat back out at them. Buck has seen it happened on more than one occasions. But he’s never been able to know Hen deeply enough to know if she ever took it, and what her results were. All he knows is that she’s married, that she has a cute kid, that the motel wouldn’t survive without Karen managing it alongside her.

“My break is almost up,” he says quietly, pocketing his phone. “I should get back to work.”

“I know you should. But, Buck… I’m worried about you.”

“Did Maddie say something? I told her I was fine.”

“No. She didn’t,” Hen replies. “You know I follow you on Instagram, right? You’re still posting almost daily after everything that happened?”

“It’s been three years.”

“Yes, and from what Maddie told me, you never even took a break. Ever.”

He clenches his jaw, looking away from her, “You don’t know anything about what happened. Whatever Maddie told you, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what happened.”

“But I know enough to know that maybe it isn’t—”

“What? The best use of my time? I’ve got nothing else to do with it,” he says, jumping down from the dryer. “Not all of us can have a wife and a kid and be happy, Hen. Some of us are just… alone.”

“Buck—”

He moves past her quickly, closing the door behind him as he moves quickly back down the hallway where he came. Passing vending machines and cleaning carts and each thing making him more and more overwhelmed with the need to destroy something.

Two years ago, he moved back to California and took the job at the Hen Motel because he wasn’t qualified to do anything else. Two years ago he had some stupid hope that maybe things would go back to normal again. That this was just a temporary thing until he got the money to go somewhere else.

And he does.

He has plenty of money to go wherever he pleases.

But he’s still stuck here, making beds and scrubbing toilets and spending nights laying down on the floor of empty motel rooms, listening to the muffled chatter of other people trying to gather the will to leave. Leaving means he’ll be home alone. Leaving means he’ll be left to himself again. And being alone at the motel is infinitely better than being alone at his apartment, which is begging for someone to come by and fill it with love and light and life again.

As if it ever was to begin with.

  
  


> ebuckz: hi.
> 
> eddiediaz: hi
> 
> ebuckz: i wanted to say i was sorry.
> 
> ebuckz: i don’t know how to do this. i’m not very good at it. and i don’t know what to expect.
> 
> ebuckz: is it okay if i call you?
> 
> eddiediaz: it’s 2020 and you want to call me?
> 
> ebuckz: i prefer talking over the phone
> 
> ebuckz: it’s easier. to hear a voice.
> 
> eddiediaz: okay. call me.

  
  


Buck saves his number in his phone, looking at the blank contact profile that only has a name. No picture, no email, no fifty various ways of contacting someone like he does for Maddie and Chimney. He hesitates for a long time before he presses the call button, holding the phone up to his ear, staring up at the wooden slats and rafters making up the ceiling.

“Hi.” Eddie says.

“Hi,” Buck replies quietly.

“Do you think that’s the only conversation we know how to hold?” he asks. “Just saying hi back and forth?”

“I think we’re getting good at it, so maybe.”

“Maybe,” he echoes. “So. You wanted to talk?”

“Yeah. Are you free?”

There’s a shuffle of clothes, something clicking quietly in the background, “Yeah. I have a few hours.”

“Oh, you think the conversation will last that long?”

“They’ve said some people meeting their soulmates can’t get off the phone for up to twelve hours the first time they talk.”

“You think that’s going to be us?”

“Well, you never know. There’s plenty to talk about.”

“Right.”

It’s quiet for a long moment, a quiet sigh escaping Eddie, “Look, you said you didn’t know how to do this, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t either. So we just take it easy. Slow. No pressure. But I think… maybe there’s one question we should get out of the way before this goes any further?”

“And what’s that?”

“Whether or not this is… one of those romantic soulmate things or platonic.”

“Or sexual,” Buck says automatically.

“What?”

“You haven’t heard of them?” he says, smiling softly. “Some people only have good sexual chemistry and that’s it.”

“You want me to fly over there and find out?”

His face feels warm, the smile stuck there perpetual and awkward, “N-No.”

“So that’s maybe a no to the romantic one, too?” Eddie asks. “Because for me… I don’t know. I’ve never… I don’t like guys.”

“Okay.”

“Do you?”

“No,” he says, and he still doesn’t know if that’s a lie or not. He can’t figure out it in his head. If the attraction he has towards some men is just the ability to know whether or not a guy is genuinely good looking or if it’s jealousy or—

“So we’re friends.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Okay. Friends.”

  
  


Eddie hasn’t had a real phone conversation that lasted longer than five minutes in—

Probably ten years, almost. Maybe doctor appointments and bills that he had to call for, waiting on hold for twenty minutes listening to bad orchestra music, but those aren’t something he’d count like he’d count his conversation with Buck. He joked about soulmates having long phone calls, but he never actually expected to be one of the people that could.

He didn’t think the basics of joking around about their interests would tip him over to midnight, would cause him to be struggling not to laugh or say anything while he was brushing his teeth lest he choke himself to death on toothpaste and leave his soulmate listening to him gasp for air over the phone. Eddie didn’t even think he’d have the much in common with Buck at all.

And they don’t. In terms of their jobs (Buck is a maid at a hotel, Eddie works a job at a construction store that sometimes uses him to help with home improvement projects) and their home lives (Buck isn’t married, has no serious girlfriend, no kids, and Eddie didn’t know how to say who Christopher or Shannon are, so he omits them and changes the conversation before he feels so guilty about it he’d have to confess to the stupid lie within two minutes of saying it) they couldn’t be much different.

But then they started talking about movies and games and it clicked. Easy interests that a hundred different conversations could roll off of. And Buck is funny. Funnier than Eddie gave him credit for when he spent a week stalking his Instagram page and trying to brush him off as the shallow, superficial man that would’ve made it hurt a little less if this didn’t work out.

They only start to part ways because Buck’s phone dies. His goodbye is sudden, too quick, and then he hesitates on the line for a long moment in the silence, not hanging up.

“Something wrong?” Eddie asks.

“No. Just… I don’t want to hang up. I don’t have a charger here. I have to head home. I should’ve three hours ago.”

“Go home,” he replies. “Charge your phone. Get some sleep. Message me tomorrow. Or call me, if you’re so needy.”

“I am needy,” Buck laughs. “Does talking on the phone bother you?”

“No.”

“If it does, you could just tell me. I just like hearing people’s voices. It’s reassuring.”

“You need that? Reassurance?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Eddie says quietly. “Then let me reassure you, I’ll be here tomorrow. We can talk tomorrow. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No. You’re just eight hundred miles away.”

“But only a second when you call. Or a few hours if you want me to fly out there and test that sexual bond.”

“Shut up,” Buck laughs, loud, unhindered, then he goes quiet and Eddie envisions Buck sitting in a car, looking out the window at the darkened night sky and a neon sign for the motel, smiling softly. “Tha—”

The line clicks. A quiet tone following as Eddie pulls the phone away from his ear, looking at the two hour twenty eight minute thirty-seven second call vanish from him.

Dead battery.

His stomach sinks as he sets his phone down on the nightstand, the dark enveloping him again. He’s tired. Exhausted. His body hurts from laying down tiles in the bathroom of a woman’s house the day before and he was looking forward to falling asleep the moment he got home and now he wants nothing less. He just wants the phone to ring again. He wants to hear Buck talk to him again, to hear his voice again. A slow, deep thing. A rumbling laughter more infectious than anything Eddie can imagine. 

Eddie lays in the dark, staring at the nightstand as the numbers on his alarm clock tick by, telling him how little sleep he’s going to get, how unlikely the phone call is the further they tick up.

And then—

A quiet little chime.

  
  


> ebuckz: sorry. my phone died
> 
> eddiediaz: it’s okay
> 
> ebuckz: i just wanted to say good night.
> 
> ebuckz: it was nice talking to you.
> 
> ebuckz: and i’ll definitely call you again.

**Author's Note:**

> the match your dna service was taken from "the one" by john marrs


End file.
